Adobe Audition issues

[notbillcosby]

I use Adobe Audition (Cool Edit) for much of my recording and editing... I know it's far from the best out there, but it's what I started with and is still the easiest for me to navigate. I'm working on switching to something else, but that's not the point. The point is, I'm having a problem:

I was recording a performance, 8 seperate tracks. 17 minutes into it, Audition decided to take a dump. I closed it quickly and opened it again, and chose to resume the session that I was working on. Since it was taking my computer a really long time to open up 8 17-minute 32 bit wave files and I needed to get recording again before the next song started, I opened another copy of Audition, and then closed the one that was still struggling to get those wave files open.

Problem? Now when I open audition, it doesn't ask me if i want to resume a session. I went into my temp folder and found the file all of that stuff was temporarily saved to: Audx1D43.tmp. I moved it out of my temp folder, for fear of it being written over.

So how do i get that TMP file to turn into my botched 17 minutes of recorded tracks? I kinda have a feeling a few people are gonna say "use OSX" or "use Cubase" or something... And, I know, but that won't fix this problem. :-|

[manning1]

i used to use the old cool edit on several things and actually suspect your pc confign might be the problem. if you post what it is i might be able to help futher.
i now use something else because i needed midi features audition didnt have.
on to your problem.
if i remember there was a feature in cool edit to open various files including temp files. i know, because i did it once or twice. a dialogue would come up and ask various questions. if its not still in latest audition get hold of the old cool edit 96 and see if that works. however you MUST in 96 if i remember select the file open option ALL FILES. look for your temp file in the list in the dir and read it in.
if i remember i think these temp files are basically STILL WAVE AUDIO files but probably with incomplete wave header info which is why it asks questions.
anyway. hope these pointers help you and get you up again.
if you DO manage to get it read into 96 or audition (try file type all files in audition.ive forgotten if its there. but it IS in 96). it will display as one big file of ALL TRACKS probably. so you will need to highlight each track section and save as a windows wave file.
i'm sorry if some of this is vague. but its been a long time. all the best.
ps...if i remember if your successfull in reading in the file into 96 or audition,
zoom in at the beginning and youll see a spike probably. this should be silenced if you get one. it depends on the file.

[notbillcosby]

Do you remember how exactly you imported a temp file? If it was just sitting real obvious-like in a menu, i don't think it's there anymore. I could try to find Cool Edit 2000, which i have around here somewhere, and try that out...

[manning1]

heres from memory.
in 2000 or 96 or audition.
FILE>>>OPEN.
now look for a horizontal drop down box under the big area where the files are listed with an arrow that says something like FILE TYPE.CHANGE IT TO FILE TYPE ALL FILES instead of windows pcm or wave etc. NAVIGATE USING WINDOWS to your temp file.
in the dialogue click OPEN.
tell me if that works. peace.

[NeoVXR]

did you record more than 1 track at the same time? then the format my be unreadable by any other process because of missing structural info. it is likely interleaved.

anyway, you could start to record something junk (same number of tracks!) and forcefully shut down adobe with the task manager. then examine the temp directory and replace the suspicious temp file that was currently at work, with the old one from your save directory.

on re-opening AA, you might be lucky and it asks you to confirm the temporary session. then it could find some of the lost data. but if more than 1 file is involved (maybe some index and session definition files) you might be lost without the whole bunch of corresponding temp files and snippets.

[notbillcosby]

Originally Posted by NeoVXR

did you record more than 1 track at the same time? then the format my be unreadable by any other process because of missing structural info. it is likely interleaved.

anyway, you could start to record something junk (same number of tracks!) and forcefully shut down adobe with the task manager. then examine the temp directory and replace the suspicious temp file that was currently at work, with the old one from your save directory.

on re-opening AA, you might be lucky and it asks you to confirm the temporary session. then it could find some of the lost data. but if more than 1 file is involved (maybe some index and session definition files) you might be lost without the whole bunch of corresponding temp files and snippets.

GOOD idea, I don't know why I didn't think of it myself... I will try it tomorrow when I have time to screw with things.

Edit: Just tried it. No luck. Somehow it loaded tracks that were as long as those in the "junk" session instead of the actual saved tracks, and just had weird jumbled snippets playing back.

[NeoVXR]

oh, too bad..
so there is kind of "index" and you need the file where it was in its original state, but n case it is in the registry (the worst programming style ever, to throw all the meta junk there) then.. oops..
but let it record these exactly 17 and something minutes..

[notbillcosby]

Originally Posted by NeoVXR

oh, too bad..
so there is kind of "index" and you need the file where it was in its original state, but n case it is in the registry (the worst programming style ever, to throw all the meta junk there) then.. oops..
but let it record these exactly 17 and something minutes..

It's weird though, because right after the computer screwed up i went into the temp directory, and the only file in there that had been edited that night was the one 1.7gb TMP file. So i don't know what other files it would've messed with. Agh.

[zemlin]

BTDT - and I'm afraid you are all but screwed on this one. I use Audition for all my mixing and editing work, but I was bitten a couple of times early on and gave up on using it for tracking. I record with Sony Vegas - I picked up a new, outdated license on eBAY for cheap.

Audition writes all data to the single TEMP file, which you have discovered. That data, however, in interleaved in 64k blocks. That, in itself, is not a big deal, but the interleaving is not sequential. It does not appear to follow any pattern.

A couple years ago I had an 8 track recording of a 2 hour concert that was in the same state as your problem file. I spent many hours trying to write a program that would read the little 64k blocks, compare the end of one to the start of an other, and find the ones that went together.

While I was able to read the file and break it apart, I was not able to get them into proper tracks. I had 8 "interleaved" tracks - any one track sounded herky-jerky - if I played all 8 at the same time, I had continuous playback - but I could not adjust the mix. Luckily, the mix as recorded was not bad.

Vegas records each track directly to a separate WAV file - and I can stop, save, and restart the recording in less than a second (if my fingers are nimble). It also has better metering than Audition.

I prefer Audition's mix UI, and think the native effects are FAR better sounding in Audition than in Vegas.

[notbillcosby]

Originally Posted by zemlin

BTDT - and I'm afraid you are all but screwed on this one. I use Audition for all my mixing and editing work, but I was bitten a couple of times early on and gave up on using it for tracking. I record with Sony Vegas - I picked up a new, outdated license on eBAY for cheap.

Audition writes all data to the single TEMP file, which you have discovered. That data, however, in interleaved in 64k blocks. That, in itself, is not a big deal, but the interleaving is not sequential. It does not appear to follow any pattern.

A couple years ago I had an 8 track recording of a 2 hour concert that was in the same state as your problem file. I spent many hours trying to write a program that would read the little 64k blocks, compare the end of one to the start of an other, and find the ones that went together.

While I was able to read the file and break it apart, I was not able to get them into proper tracks. I had 8 "interleaved" tracks - any one track sounded herky-jerky - if I played all 8 at the same time, I had continuous playback - but I could not adjust the mix. Luckily, the mix as recorded was not bad.

Vegas records each track directly to a separate WAV file - and I can stop, save, and restart the recording in less than a second (if my fingers are nimble). It also has better metering than Audition.

I prefer Audition's mix UI, and think the native effects are FAR better sounding in Audition than in Vegas.

Well shit. Looks like I won't be gettin paid for this one.

I've been poking around in Mackie's Tracktion 2. Seems real nice, very intuitive, and not all gross and cluttered like Cubase and Logic. Thoughts?

[zemlin]

Originally Posted by notbillcosby

I've been poking around in Mackie's Tracktion 2. Seems real nice, very intuitive, and not all gross and cluttered like Cubase and Logic. Thoughts?

I looked at T1 when it was free, considering it as an economical replacement for Vegas. For the price, it is certainly worth a test drive - even if you only use if for laying down tracks. You can do like I do and record with one program, mix with Audition.

I did not like T1 - it would have taken bloody forever to sort throught he cluttered pile if input icons to setup a 16 track recording. I understand they fixed that in T2.

I did not like the look-and-feel of T1 - YMMV. It would have been fine for a few tracks - but I sometimes get into too many to have a decent UI with their screen layout.

[NeoVXR]

I also have the "gift" version.

technically, I think that there is VERY good code in it. it does a lot for the small size, and that is promising.

I played with a 16 track mix and could work it out. with a big screen (~2000 px) and a 3-4 GHz CPU it should make 32 tracks in real time, or 64 with half of them "frozen".
depends on the plugins.

the built-in EQ is funny but quite powerful.
directx with the free VB_ffx4 shell is cumbersome and slow, but it CAN save the parameters.
I used 7 shells with 14 plugin instances, besides the EQs and various other stuff.
that was too much for my test system, but with a good harddisk and 2 GHz it should work smooth.

for a project with limited track count it is very quick to get to a good result. should be ideal for demo mixes, and also for singers and composers who mount some snippets in a quick test arrangement.
I got a vocal track from a singer (a capella), and mounted it on top of some looped beats from a CD. I had to divide it into many snippets because of timing issues, and also did some pitch shift. this is an easy task with tracktion.

[notbillcosby]

I really like audition for being very organized on screen, having a built in wave editor, ease of trimming or stretching clips, having EQ and levels for each track always available right there, and maybe a few other things i'm not thinking of right now.

I dislike it because it locks up like it did on me at the jazz concert for one thing... Also, automation of plugins is absolute crap. I think maybe Tracktion 2 would take care of my problems, minus needing a wave editor. The demo of T1 did a great job for me with a few problems, all of which sounded like they were fixed in T2. My only complaint about T1, from what I've used it for, is the fact that the buttons are way bigger than they need to be and take up a ton of screen space. Obviously, selecting which input to use for each track was a pain in the ass, but that's been fixed with T2...